


work relationship

by jasondont (minigami)



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars: Jedi: Fallen Order (Video Game), Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Canon Compliant, Extremely Dubious Consent, Extremely Fucked Up Power Dynamics, F/M, Mind Games, Not A Fix-It, Purge Trooper Cody
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-01
Updated: 2021-02-01
Packaged: 2021-03-12 20:15:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,302
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29141367
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/minigami/pseuds/jasondont
Summary: 16 BBY. Cody's chip is gone. He could disappear, leave the Empire behind—he doesn't.
Relationships: Trilla Suduri | Second Sister/CC-2224 | Cody
Comments: 7
Kudos: 20





	work relationship

**Author's Note:**

> i listened to evil by nadine shah on repeat while i wrote to this. i don't even know
> 
> they are both extremely homosexual but clearly that won't stop them from having extremely fucked up sex

The briefing ends. The Second Sister nods her head, the black helmet reflecting the harsh white lights from the bridge, and then she turns on her heel with a flourish of her cloak and crosses the room, her steps long and quick.   
Cody falls in after her with the ease of routine, his rifle cradled against his chest. The world beyond the red lenses of his helmet is crimson, fire and blood. The white shells skitter out of their way, and he doesn’t bother looking at them—they’re not even brothers but nat-born speedies, more or less trained, young and fragile and insecure. 

He doesn’t think he hates them. He doesn’t give enough of a shit.

At his back the rest of his squad—brothers all, identical in and out of armour—follow in their steps. There is no comm chatter; Suduri will know, and she is in a bad mood.   
She doesn’t actually care about the fact that they have things to talk about, or that those things don’t have that much to do with her, usually, but she is in a snit and she’s had to behave for the officers, and she’s looking for a fight. If she can’t find it—well. She’s a good hunter. She’ll find one anyways.

She stops right in front of one of the lifts. There is an ensign waiting there, but she eyes them, jumps and leaves, her head lowered. Cody rolls his eyes.

“Twenty-four.”   
Her helmet speakers turn her voice into a velvety growl. Cody feels something hard and cold drop in his stomach. He stands to attention.  
“Yes, ma’am.”  
“With me.”  
He swallows. When he replies, his voice sounds perfectly level.  
“Yes, ma’am.”

The rest of his squad leaves without a word. 

They won’t talk about this later. 

  
The trip down is a quiet one. Cody can hear his own breath inside his helmet. Suduri stands in front of him, back straight, hands linked at her back. She’s taller than him, and he fixes his eyes on the back of her helmet, on the place where her neck disappears under her head when she isn’t wearing one. She has a scar there—she has many scars—white and raised. A burn.   
He has never touched it, and the fact that he knows it is there, that he has seen it more than once, makes him so angry he can barely breathe. It implies a certain degree of intimacy, of mutual knowledge and comfort that both exists and doesn’t at the same time.

He doesn’t know how it feels—he never will. But he’s seen it and he was made to remember, to memorize easily and quickly: once his eyes see something it stays in his brain forever.  
“I can feel you thinking, commander,” she suddenly says.   
She sounds amused—but she always does. At first he used to think it was all a lie—it isn’t. This is all a bad, unfunny joke to her.  
Cody keeps quiet. She snorts, and then the lift stops with a ding, and its doors slide open. 

The Second Sister steps out of the lift. After her follows first her cape and then Cody, still cradling that stupid rifle. It’s a beautiful, and powerful weapon—and he’s fast enough to put a bolt inside her brain from this close up, even if she would see it coming. It would melt through the plasteel alloy in an instant. That scar, high up on her neck, right over the cerebral cortex—one hit there. Bullseye. 

They are in crew quarters. A long hallway, all shiny black durasteel and harsh white light, surrounded by silence and closed doors. At his back, the lift whispers itself closed and leaves with a low beep. 

Suduri stands there, shoulders straight and hands relaxed by her hips. Cody can’t see the lightsaber from where he is standing—it’s hidden by her cloak—but he doesn’t need to. He knows where it is, he knows how it looks, how it sounds. He has never held it in his hand and he has no intention to. It’s an elegant and deadly thing, and he hates it like once upon a time he wasn’t sure he’d ever be capable of hating anything.  
The Second Sister takes one step. Then another. Cody stays where he is. She stops.

“Last chance, commander,” she says, her voice too loud in the quiet of the hallway. “In or out.”

She means that. He could leave. She cares less about imposing her will than about offering him the chance to play, to choose.  
She always tells him that. In or out. It’s the only thing he’s allowed to have an opinion about where she’s concerned. In or out. He can choose to follow her inside or stay outside. To spend time with her or spend it with his brothers in their bunk.

Cody swallows. He feels his hands clench around his rifle. His gloves squeak.   
She tilts her helmet. She’s getting impatient.

He takes a step, then another. His boots are soundless on the durasteel floor, but the long coat isn’t. It swishes with each step, whispers against his legs.   
He follows her, as he always does. She scoffs, loud enough her helmet speakers pick up the noise, as she always does, and he thinks about lifting his weapon and shooting her in the head, as he always does.

  
Her cabin is small. It’s dark and cold and drab, but there is a bed, big enough for two, and a fresher, and a little desk. On the desk rests her bag, black and slick and almost empty.

She takes off her helmet and places it next to it. She’s not looking at him when she unhooks her lightsaber from her belt and sets it right next to her helmet. Cody can see himself on the red visor, a dark shadow, as dead and sterile as everything else in the room.  
He usually leaves his rifle wedged in the corner right behind the bed. The Imperials like their Stardestroyers as they like pretty much everything else—shiny and following exactly the same set of blueprints. There is always a nook there, just the right size, and by now Cody barely has to think about it. He takes off his helmet next, places it on the stool, and waits, clenching and unclenching his hands, while the Second Sister approaches him.

Her hands are clammy and very cold. She brushes her fingers against the scar the droid left when it took out his chip. She always does that. He can’t touch but she is allowed and she likes—he doesn’t know why she does that.   
He went to the med bay because she told him to. The droid took out the chip because she told it to do so, and because she overrode its programming when it tried to resist. 

He thinks he knows why she did it—it wasn’t hard to guess. Once upon a time, three years and a lifetime ago, he commanded millions of his brothers. He was made to see and understand and plan accordingly. When Cody sees Trilla Suduri, what he sees is a solved riddle, and not a very interesting or difficult one, at that.   
In a way, that makes it worse. It’s been months of this—he could have left. He could have—deserted, disappeared. But he has not.   
Cody stares at her, chin tilted up so that he can look her in the eye, face blank and eyes flat, stock still. She brushes the backs of her fingers down his face, across his cheekbone, rests her thumb on his lips. 

In or out—he can always choose.

That’s the point. That has always been the point.

When she presses on his lip, he opens his mouth.


End file.
